Cabin Gulch by Zane Grey Page A

stolen into an African village and run off with a white woman. She could not shake the memory. It was this that made her kinder to Kells than otherwise would have been possible.
    All Joan’s faculties sharpened in this period. She felt her own development—the beginning of a bitter and hard education—an instinctive assimilation of all that Nature taught its wild people and creatures, the first thing in elemental life—self-preservation. Parallel in her heart and mind ran a hopeless despair and a driving unquenchable spirit. The former was fear—the latter love. She believed, beyond a doubt, that she doomed herself along with Jim Cleve; she believed that she had the courage, the power, the love to save him, if not herself. And the reason that she did not falter and fail in this terrible situation was because her despair, great as it was, did not equal her love.
    That morning, before being lifted upon his horse, Kells buckled on his gun belt. The sheath and full round of shells and the gun made this belt a burden for a weak man. Or so Red Pearce insisted. But Kells laughed in his face. The men, always excepting Gulden, were unfailing in kindness and care. Apparentlythey would have fought for Kells to the death. They were simple and direct in their rough feelings. But in Kells, Joan thought, was a character who was a product of this border wildness yet one who could stand aloof from himself and see the possibilities, the unexpected, the meaning of that life. Kells knew that a man and yet another might show kindness and faithfulness one moment, but the very next, out of a manhood retrograded to the savage, out of circumstance or chance, might respond to a primitive force far sundered from thought or reason, and rise to unbridled action. Joan divined that Kells buckled on his gun to be ready to protect her. But his men never dreamed his motive. Kells was a strong bad man set among men like him, yet he was infinitely different because he had brains.
    On the start of the journey Joan was instructed to ride before Kells and Pearce, who supported the leader in his saddle. The pack drivers and Bate Wood and Frenchy rode ahead, while Gulden held to the rear. This order was preserved till noon when the cavalcade halted for a rest in a shady, grassy, and well-watered nook. Kells was haggard, his brow wet with clammy dew, and livid with pain. Yet he was cheerful and patient. Still he hurried the men through their tasks.
    In an hour the afternoon travel was begun. The cañon and its surroundings grew more rugged and of larger dimensions. Yet the trail appeared to get broader and better all the time. Joan noticed intersecting trails, running down from side cañons and gulches. The descent was gradual, and scarcely evident in any way except in the running water and warmer air.
    Kells tired before the middle of the afternoon and he would have fallen from his saddle but for the supportof his fellows. One by one they helped him, and it was not easy work to ride alongside, holding him up. Joan observed that Gulden did not offer his services. He seemed a part of this gang, yet not of it. Joan never lost a feeling of his presence behind her, and from time to time, when he rode closer, the feeling grew stronger. Toward the close of that afternoon she became aware of Gulden’s strange attention. And when a halt was made for camp, she dreaded something nameless.
    This halt occurred early, before sunset, and had been necessitated by the fact that Kells was fainting. They laid him out on blankets, with his head on his saddle. Joan tended him and he recovered somewhat, although he lacked the usual keenness.
    It was a long hour with saddles, packs, horses—with wood to cut and fire to build and meal to cook. Kells drank thirstily, but refused food.
    â€œJoan,” he whispered at an opportune moment, “I’m only tired . . . dead for sleep. You stay beside me. Wake me quick . . . if you want to.”
    He closed